Supreme Court clears last hurdle in way of PM’s Kashi corridor

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the last legal hurdle in the way of the PM’s Kashi Vishwanath corridor when it disposed of a bunch of petitions challenging the project. The petitions were filed by people claiming to be tenants of the buildings which were in the way of the project.

A two-judge vacation bench, comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and BR Gavai, disposed of the petition after the state of Uttar Pradesh said that they had been offered varying rates of compensation amount from Rs 1 lakh to 10 lakh to the affected people.

The Allahabad HC had on May 22 refused to grant any relief to the tenants of the buildings which have been acquired for demolition for the corridor to come up. Some of them were tenants which occupied the ground floor of a building on Gyanvapi Chowk.


That building had been sold off by the original owner to the government, but the tenants claimed that their rights cannot be settled by any such act and would have to be determined separately under the UP Rent Control Act.

They project envisages expansion and beautification of the roads from the river Ganges and the Kashi Vishwanath temple.